Impact of Spectroscopic Methods on Structure Elucidation

Over the last 40 years, many novel fungal metabolites have been isolated with 

The microbiological hydroxylation of the steroid progesterone (1.35) at C-11 by Rhizopus arrhizus was reported in 1952. This biotransformation, which is now carried out commercially on a substantial scale, provided the facile means of 

The assoeiation of fungi with mammalian diseases came to the fore in 1960 with the diseovery of the aflatoxins (1.36). The death of turkeys from liver damage having been fed on groundnuts eontaminated with Aspergillus flavus led to the isolation of the highly carcinogenic aflatoxins. These developments are discussed in Chapter 9. It led to the awareness of the potential human health hazards from microbial metabolites and the implications of the presence of other mycotoxins in foodstuffs such as patulin in apple juice and the tri-chothecenes on corn. The development of analytical methods for the detection of mycotoxins has become an important aspect of food science. 

On a more positive note a mycoprotein known as Quorn , whieh was obtained from Fusarium venenatum (originally deseribed as a strain of F. graminearurri), was approved for human consumption in the United Kingdom in 1984 and marketed as a meat substitute in the 1990s. The original fungal isolate was diseovered in a soil sample from Marlow in the 1960s. 

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